For several reasons, you might type up your menu in-house rather than have a commercially printed menu.
It may be that you're a start-up and still experimenting with your menu items. You may have a menu that changes every week or even every day. The chances are that your design company will have given you shells on which to print this.
Quite often though, the task of typing and printing these menus is given to a staff member for the wrong reasons. Maybe he or she types faster than anyone else. Maybe she is 'the girl in the office' so typing jobs automatically go to her. Maybe, it's a different person every time. But whatever the situation, it's pretty certain that a) that person is not a qualified designer b) the person may not have the attention to detail that your restaurant's most important in-house marketing piece deserves.
It's even worse if your menu-typing-person is a frustrated designer or likes to think that they have a 'flair'. Oh dear. This is when the problems really start.
You know how important the details are to your brand. You know that your brand isn't just your logo and your signage. You know that your brand is all about those important little details that set you aside from the rest. So why on earth do we see so many slipshod, scruffy, typo-laden, badly aligned menus with inconsistencies, seven different fonts and a million other problems which are totally against the brand rules?
Let's take the font. Your menu-typing-person often sees that as a way to make a mark; to make their own personality stand out. It's like letting a kid loose in a sweetshop.
If you are a Chinese restaurant, you are likely to get one of those dreadful fake Asian fonts. God forbid that you are an Irish pub with all those appalling Gaelic-style fonts that come with the average PC. British pubs are just as bad with their ye olde Englishe fonte. Serve steaks and barbecues, or have any connection with Texas and you're likely to get one of those unreadable wild west fonts. And if I see another kids' menu using Comic Sans, I will throw it out of the window. Even fine dining restaurants have been known to succumb and use schmaltzy script fonts which are only used on old-style wedding invitations - and really shouldn't be.
These fancy fonts (which are often badly constructed) or at most, one of them, can be used for category headers (APPETIZERS, DRINKS etc.) but your design company will determine this.
Remember, the average diner will look at your menu for about two minutes - if you're lucky. Don't confuse them and make sure that your menu gives them the right impression, guides them towards what you want to sell them and is READABLE.
From time to time, you'll see an 'expert' on the internet who tells you to use a large font on your menus as these are easier to read. At least 12pt., they say. That is nonsense. See the link under RELATED TOPICS below. Large type looks patronizing. It makes your menu look like a kid's book. It's not type size that determine readability. The font you use is a strong factor as is the standard of lighting in your restaurant. You might think that the dim lighting is your 'ambience' but it's actually more likely to annoy people. If you use a patterned background on your menu (and if you do, you aren't a TSDG customer, obviously), then your menu is going to be unreadable. If you print your menu on colored card then you are reducing the legibility of your menu.
Remember those two minutes - make sure they are working for you.
Related topics:
Does size matter?
Font snobs
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